Mac desktops and their long lives

[Astro What]

I've been using my Mac Mini since mid 2013 and have had to replace a few components on it, one being putting an SSD in it (which breathed new life into it). But it's so old now several browsers won't run on the OS version it is able to have installed. There is a way to hack the Mini to get later versions, but the two times I tried it, it failed.
Just found out today that on the 25th a new Mac Studio M4 Max (16 core CPU/40 Core GPU/16 core Neural Engine, 64GB Ram/4TB storage) will be arriving on our doorstep as an early Christmas present.

I'm honestly a big fan of the Mac over Windows and even over Linux. Of course, being having a BSD heritage, it's probably not surprising I like it. This machine will become my primary image processing machine for the captures I do. I just hope that the software vendor will finally get a version of their software out that fully supports the M4 chipset.

To say I'm looking forward to it would be an understatement.

 

[Retro]

Hmmm... NZ is a Windows forum, so Retro will now short circuit.

Enjoy your new Mac.

 

[Astro What]

Just added a MacBook Air 13" M4 to the mix.
If I decide to do the upgrade of the 1TB storage on the Studio I would have to have a newer Mac system on hand.... and considering that Apple wants $2200 for the 8TB storage upgrade and I can by it now aftermarket for $800... guess which I plan on doing.

 

[Astro What]

Dayum.... this new Studio stomps the old Mac Mini and is faster than the Dell Optiplex running my processing software. Only issue is should have gotten the larger storage option when I purchased, but with the new dock coming in I'll have 8TB of storage available on NVMe via the ThunderBolt 5 connector for storing my images.

 

[Retro]

Came across this video of a failed Mac, in the suggestions. Just look at how this guy lost his data despite making regular backups and then on a manual backup after the Mac had failed. Bad luck really struck him. One just can't be too careful with it.

How do you back up your data, if not too personal a question?

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[Astro What]

How do you back up your data, if not too personal a question?

Sounds like he uses a "special" program to do backups. Miraculously Apple provides the ability to do TimeCapsule backups to an external hard drive or media. His failure to do so is ALL on him.

Also, remind us.... doesn't the equivalent happen on Windows (blue screen/boot issue)? In fact, does Microsoft even provide a decent backup solution that is comparable to Time Capsule in the Mac OS in their current version? The answer to that is no.
That video sounds like the idiot didn't even have an external drive hooked up to do Time Capsule backups. It bit him in the ass because he didn't really know what he was doing.

And yes, you STILL can get the deadly blue screen with Windows. In fact, I've currently got a Dell Optiplex 7070 Ultra sitting in my computer room that is doing that. It needs a new NVMe after 5 1/2 years of daily use.

I've got a 5 year old external hard drive doing my TimeCapsule backups currently and have a new 1TB external ThunderBolt SSD on order to take over from it.

 

[Hitcore]

How do you back up your data, if not too personal a question?

I can't really join in on the conversation as far as Mac goes, as I literally have not owned a single Apple device, ever. But I can answer that question:

Ever since I've lost a lot of files once, I double back up.

1. External hard drives.
2. Cloud storage. A paid service, even. With unlimited* space.

(* 5 TB as a base, after that upload speeds are capped. But my internet is so slow that I probably wouldn't even be able to tell the difference, lol. I'm currently at like 3.6 TB.)

 

[Retro]

@Astro What I've heard of TimeCapsule, but have never used it as I don't own a Mac, so can't comment on how good it is. I'll just take your word for it. I use Karen's Replicator for my backups which works very well even though it's not been updated in years.

Whether he screwed up or not, it wasn't too obvious to me from that video as he did make regular backups, other than testing his backups regularly, especially for that critically important project. If he'd done test restores, he'd have known about the incorrect backup location, so there's definitely some human error in there for sure. Question is whether his general backup regime was good enough or not, since he doesn't go into detail about it, so I'll reserve judgement on that.

Also, remind us.... doesn't the equivalent happen on Windows (blue screen/boot issue)?

Yes, of course, that's why all my data is physically stored on drives other than the boot drive, always. Of course, I'd lose all my apps, settings and stuff, but I can live with that as cloning it takes such a long time, even with SSDs and goes out of date quickly. Note that my desktop files are part of my backup regime with KR.

Karen's Replicator the Backup Utility for Windows v3.7.6 Released May 25, 2020 | Karen's Power Tools | Karen's Software

Automatically backup files, directories, even entire drives! Karen's Replicator copies selected files from one drive/folder to another. Source and Destination folders can reside anywhere on your network.

www.karenware.com

 

[Retro]

@Hitcore Yes, two backups are very much recommended, including an offsite one in the cloud, especially. I'd never have offsite backups only though.

 

[Hitcore]

Also, I always prefer to keep my backups organized manually. Yes, it's a lot of dragging and dropping, but so be it. I want to be in full control over my data. Not too fond of backup managers. They can give a false sense of security, where you believe that everything went smoothly, automatically. But oops, something went wrong the entire time, and now you're screwed.

 

[Retro]

Seriously, have a look at Karen's Replicator. Been using it since around 2011, it's always seen me right and it's free. No weird backup regimes or formats, just files copied from one place to the other according to parameters that you set and very quickly too.

 

[Astro What]

TimeCapsule is one of the nicest backups that I've run across, especially at the price (free).
You can do full restores from it, migrate your data to a new computer automatically (programs and data) without having to pick/choose or you can even go into the TimeCapsule and pick individual files out of it.
You can also have a TimeCapsule drive hooked either directly up to the PC or on a network (NAS) to use. In fact, my current router has the ability to configure the attached USB drive either as a share point or a TimeCapsule drive.

 

[Retro]

I can believe it works nicely. Got a nice Apple integration example: went round a friend's house to troubleshoot his Sonos speaker not working with his iMac.

I went to connect my iPhone to his WiFi, the iMac noticed and asked me to allow it. Clicked yes and was immediately connected, no messing around with awkward passwords that refuse to work.

And the speaker? Couldn't get it working as it gave an error trying play a file from a web link, no way I could see to fix it so advised my friend to call Somos support. They figured out that Apple are blocking it, so he's using a workaround now. He wasn't too clear on exactly what the problem was, so can't give you any more detail.